No 6 -- April 1977 Edited by Michael Walters
GROSVENOR A.O.S., Patience, Thursday 24 February 1977.
I went in for my usual first act of this performance: I was not tempted to stay for the second, though I subsequently learned from Roger Thompson who attended the Friday performance, that Act 2 was a distinct improvement. The overture was very good, with a bright and exciting pulse and a Rossinian bounce. The curtain went up on an Act 1 set consisting of a backdrop of a formal garden, which seemed singularly inappropriate. The opening chorus was broad and expansive. Lady Angela (Eileen Marner) sang her opening solo unremarkably, later she acted with considerable charm. Lady Ella (Janet Crossman) was good; she had a clear, high voice, and looked like a Burne-Jones child, (or Botticellian?). The thrusting aside of the ladies clustering round her before bursting into song was good. She came over beautifully in "I hear the soft note" - but this number was a bit rushed. Lady Jane (Pauline Weiss) was melodramatic but without style. Patience (Anne Pooley) was acceptable; she sang some wrong notes in the recit. to her first song, and attempted the optional top D at the end, which she missed! The full repeat of "The soldiers of our Queen" (two identical verses) seemed pointless. The Colonel (Richard Doran) looked and sounded more like a farmer than a Colonel. He sang without personality, and muddled his words. The Duke's line "what is there to adulate in me" seemed to sum up this character's performance: Richard Rayment was as dull as usual, but dullness was not too unsuitable for this part. Mercifully they did not restore the Duke's Song. Lady Saphir (Patricia Sorrell) seemed to have lost her voice - when she sang "Mystic poet" she was barely audible. Some other lines that she ought to have sung, she spoke. Bunthorne (Christopher Roberts) had a nice delivery and a pleasant voice, but his gestures were stock and unimaginative - they didn't mean anything. His song seemed interminable and was getting very boring by the end. His acting was too unvarying. Grosvenor (Nicholas Clough) had a good voice and acted well. He spoke his lines with more intelligence than anybody else, and the play had an immediate lift when he made his entrance. He seemed to be good at just underplaying his lines. At the end of Act 1 he was got down onto the floor by a crowd of ladies who swarmed round, pawing over him so that he invisible to the audience, and then a pair of trousers went flying. This was an anomalous, and unnecessarily vulgar piece of business in a production that otherwise had none of it, and was inappropriate. MICHAEL WALTERS
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